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Music is one of my passions. From time to time I’ll hear a song that has a new meaning for me – it might not necessarily be the meaning the songwriter/artist had in mind when they wrote or performed it, but it speaks to me in a certain way. I heard this song a while back that has resonated with me a lot lately. Orianthi’s “According To You” talks about a girl who is trying to make a decision between two guys (possibly a current boyfriend and an ex-boyfriend). One views her as positive things, but the other views her in a negative manner.

Throughout my life I’ve struggled with self-esteem issues and as a result this song spoke to me on another level. It felt like it was an inner monologue for me – like it was Satan saying I was all these negative things, but according to God I’m the positive things. The lyrics say “According to you I’m stupid, I’m useless…I can’t do anything right.” (This is something that Satan tries to convince us of on a daily basis.) On the other side of the conversation is God’s view of us – “According to him, I’m beautiful…incredible…He can’t get me out of his head. According to him I’m funny…irresistible…everything he ever wanted.”

Toward the end of the song she turns the lyrics around to the negative guy and says “According to me, you’re stupid… you’re useless…you can’t do anything right.” She is basically saying to him “You know what…I don’t care what you think! I’m important in someone else’s eyes and that’s all that matters to me!” (If only we could have the strength to say this to Satan every time he comes at us with his lies!) This song is just a reminder to me that regardless of what Satan tries to make me believe about myself, God sees me through HIS eyes of love and grace…finding me irresistible and everything HE ever wanted.

Last month I had to buy new glasses. It had been almost three years since I had been to the eye doctor and I could definitely tell that I was in need of new glasses. Once my new glasses arrived, I tried them on and I noticed something – the frames partially blocked my peripheral vision. As a result, I had to learn to adjust my focus.

The sermon at church Sunday was about Jesus walking on the water (Matthew 14:22-33). Peter wants Jesus to ask him to come out on the water with Him, so Jesus responds to his request by calling him to step out of the boat into the water. Initially Peter was fine, but when he took his eyes of Jesus he started to sink. Peter’s focus wasn’t where it should have been…he was focused on the surrounding circumstances and not the Savior. Just like Peter, we have a tendency to look at our circumstances when hardships come into our life.

Readjusting your focus is not a one time thing. The fact that we are human causes us to be easily distracted and the enemy tries (and is successful more often than not) to take our focus off of Jesus and put it on ourselves (“What will I do about <insert your latest circumstance here>?” or “Why is this happening to me?”). We can’t see the big picture because we are so caught up in the moment. I know it’s easier said than done (trust me…it can be a struggle for me more times than I’d like to admit) but that’s why it’s not a one time thing. Think about it, you don’t go to the eye doctor just ONCE during your life time and you’re done – you go numerous times throughout your life.

You can’t beat yourself up when it happens – it’s like driving and getting lost…you don’t just pull the car over and leave it. You find out where you took a wrong turn and get back on the road. No one is perfect, and if we were we would have no need for a Savior. Don’t give up! The Message translation of Philippians 3:12-14 is very fitting for this – “I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back.”

In what area(s) of your life should you readjust your focus at this time?

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In days before video games and the Internet were popular, children used to play a game called telephone. You would get a group of friends together and the first person would whisper something in a second person’s ear. That second person in turn would whisper what they thought they heard into a third person’s ear, and so on until the last person would say out loud what they thought they had heard. The first message might have been something like “my favorite color is blue” but by the time it got to the last person it became something like “I ate my favorite shoe.” It’s funny how things can easily be misheard and misunderstood.

Misheard song lyrics can also be pretty hysterical at times. Did Destiny’s Child sing about being a “Survivor, I’m gonna make it!” or was it “I’m on Survivor, I’m a Jamaican?!” Did Elton John really sing about a “Tiny Dancer” or was it really an ode to Who’s The Boss star Tony Danza? One individual has even created a YouTube channel dedicated to Bad Lip Reading in songs, movie, and television.

Life can be complicated. We all go through times in our life where we may misunderstand things, but what do we do about it? When you feel like you’ve misheard things or if you want clarification, go straight to the source. Gossip can often be stopped right in its tracks when you confront it from the start instead of letting it fester. The same can be said for our spiritual lives. When in doubt, go straight to the ULTIMATE source to find clarification and don’t just believe what you’re told…find it out for yourself.

When you think of great philosophers, the star of such “great” films as Piranha 3DD, Dr. Dolittle 3, Predator 2, and D.C. Cab does not immediately come to mind. Yes, my friends…I am talking about the one and only Gary Busey. A few months ago, I was trying to find something on television and I ended up watching some show that had Gary Busey on it (I think it was Celebrity Wife Swap or something…I honestly can’t remember) because I was bored. There is no denying the guy is a nut job, but one thing that he did really caught my attention – he would take words and make acronyms out of them to make others better understand what the word meant and he called them “Buseyisms.”

I thought he might be on to something, so I came up with one of my own. The word PROCESS stands for “Practicing Repeatedly Offers Consistent Examples of Success Stories.” For me, the word ‘process’ has always had a negative connotation because I want immediate results and don’t want to have to wait. Unfortunately, it’s not realistic to say “I want to lose 40 pounds!” and then immediately lose that weight right then and there without going through a process of exercising, eating right, and taking care of your body. It just doesn’t happen that way (no matter what those infomercial people tell you)!

The process is what makes the end result worth it! You can look back and think how far you came and what you did to achieve your goal. Just like silver goes through a process to be refined, so do we as children of God (see Zechariah 13:9). Granted, it may be painful at times and you may wonder if that pain is worth the end result, but you’ll never find out unless you stick with it.

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Last week I was reading an article that really got me thinking. The article was entitled “This Is the Average Man’s Body” and it talked about how the average male who lives in the United States has a higher BMI (Body Mass Index) , waist size, and as a whole is considered more obese than the average male from any other country. The part that caught my attention was the word average. What exactly is “average?” If you were to look it up in the dictionary, you might find something like “typical, common, or ordinary.”

We all knew someone in school who barely did enough to get by what was required of him or her. It really hit me hard when I thought that many times in life, that “someone” has been me. Colossians 3:23 (The Message) says “And don’t just do the minimum that will get you by. Do your best.” The NIV version translates the same verse this way – “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.” I always took the NIV version to literally mean work or my job. The more I reflected on the verse, the more I realized it was applicable to everything in my life. When it comes to my friendships/relationships am I just phoning it in? Am I doing the bare minimum as a leader? How about my health and taking care of myself? When I take inventory of my life, I can honestly say that I never want to find myself being average.

In what area(s) of your life have you found yourself being “average” lately?

The topic of God’s will can be very perplexing if we let it. We think of it as an equation: If I do “this” and then do “that” it will equal the will of God. It’s not quite that simple, or is it? I remember hearing someone say “Find where God is active in your life and join Him.” David G. Benner’s book Desiring God’s Will: Aligning Our Hearts with the Heart of God tries to shed some light on how we can truly desire God’s will, embrace it, and live in it.

This book is the third and final book in a series (Surrender to Love and The Gift of Being Yourself being the first and second books respectively). Its seven chapters include: Ways of Willing; My Kingdom, Thy Kingdom; Love and Will; Choosing God; Will and Desire; Choosing the Cross; Developing a Discerning Heart. I think Dr. Benner puts it best when he says, “Surrendering to God’s will makes little sense if we are not convinced of the depths of God’s love for us.” He further discusses how we get confused about God’s will thinking we must “know” it rather than how to “choose” it. He also talks about how we on our own don’t have the willpower to truly desire God’s will…that it is something for which we truly need Him to act on our behalf.

I found this final book to be an easy read and found myself eager to finish it to learn more about the topic of God’s will. I had several takeaways, but here are just a few:

“What a tragedy if we lump choosing God in with things that are not naturally attractive. Is it any wonder that the thought of surrendering to God’s will evokes mixed feelings? Choosing God’s dream for us feels like choosing to take bitter medicine.”

“Looked at carefully, willfulness is more against something than for something.”

“The act of willing surrender is a choice of openness, a choice of abandonment of self-determination, a choice of cooperation with God.”

“Discipline was, for Jesus as it should be for us, grounded in relationship and shaped by desire.”

“We become love only only by surrender and self-sacrifice. The beginning of this journey is the return to ‘our Father,’ a journey that we take with the other prodigal sons and daughters who are brothers and sisters.”

“God’s will cannot be separated from God’s kingdom.”

I highly recommend this book. It is more geared to those who are more established in their faith, but I also think that new believers would also be able to gain a great deal of knowledge from it as well.

Something has been on my mind lately. Women (specifically single women) I am posing these thoughts to you. I’ve always been taught that you don’t treat women as objects…they are people with feelings and of great value. Women comment about how men can be jerks because of the way they look at and treat women. My issue is these same women will turn around and treat men the same way they don’t want to be treated. Granted, this is not ALL women.

What gets me is these women (Christian women mind you) will go see movies like Magic Mike and describe in great detail their attraction to these Hollywood men who look like a Greek god. Then they complain about not being able to find a Godly man when they have set these unrealistic expectations that no man can ever meet. Society has jumped on this notion and uses it to promote everything from salad dressing to diet sodas.

Single guys like myself who are trying to live a Godly life get easily discouraged by all of this because we don’t look like Ryan Gosling, Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, or whatever “perfect” celebrity man women are crazy over at the moment. How can we compete with that? We can’t, so more often than not we don’t even try.

Below are two videos that I’ve seen recently that are further proof of this. The first video is for Kraft’s Zesty Italian salad dressing featuring an attractive man who ends up shirtless (I’m confused on what this has to do with salad dressing). The second video is a campaign for Men’s Wearhouse called “Give The Suit Off Your Back” which is encouraging men to bring in their slightly worn suits to donate to homeless men. The purpose is great, but the delivery is just not right — buff, shirtless men in neckties and their boxers standing on the street corner with women practically drooling over them.

How can we retrain society to prevent these issues for men in the future?